Are NBC, TNT crazy like foxes?

DavidB. Wilkerson

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Time Warner's
TWX, -0.28%
Turner Broadcasting is in discussions with General Electric's
GE, -0.72%NBC regarding the creation of a new pro football league, a task that might pose a vast challenge for the two networks' executives, one analyst says.

A Wall Street Journal article said the companies, which both lost NFL football broadcast rights during January negotiations, have been talking for "several days." The games would take place in the autumn on Sunday afternoons, head-on against the NFL.

S&P Equity Group analyst Joshua Harari in New York City said the obstacles would be considerable.

"You have to attract investors to buy teams and cover the start-up losses, you have to attract talented players," said Harari. The last two attempts to form rival leagues both failed: the United States Football League during the 1980s and the World Football League in the '70s.

But Harari isn't entirely skeptical about the venture. Obviously,the two networks can certainly give the games tremendous broadcast and cable coverage. "It's certainly one critical element that they could bring to a new league that perhaps wasn't there in the past," the analyst said. Industry indexes Radio index Broadcast TV Cable TV Newspapers Publishing Motion pictures ABC broadcast the USFL's games, but the late-summer, Saturday afternoon telecasts were all but ignored. The WFL games of the mid-'70s were syndicated on mostly UHF stations and were almost never seen live.

New teams for the NFL?

Harari suggested that NBC and TNT may not even really be trying to topple the venerable NFL. The two networks may not have to.

"Perhaps they would be happy to have a few new teams created that would eventually be folded into the NFL," Harari said. He noted that every other time a new sports league proved to be tough competition for an established one, that league was eventually absorbed by the older league.

The American Football League, which had its inaugural season in 1960, was a surprising success. The AFL offered competitive contracts to college players and raided NFL rosters until the older league agreed to a merger in 1966.

Under the terms of the merger, AFL and NFL teams had a common draft and agreed to play a postseason championship game, which eventually became known as the Super Bowl.

Perhaps not so ironically, NBC had much to do with the success of the upstart league, paying then-record broadcast rights fees to telecast the games beginning in 1965. In 1970, the AFL became the American Football Conference, or AFC, and the two old rival leagues began interconference games.

In another major coup for AFL owners, three old-line NFL teams -- the Baltimore Colts, the Cleveland Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers -- joined the AFC.

Harari also cited the American Basketball Association, or ABA, which was absorbed into the NBA beginning with the 1976-77 season.

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